Therdis had resolved to stay the course and to remain with the group of Rangers, but that resolution had not made it any easier to stomach their quarreling. More than once, she had thought she had built up the nerve to leave her tent and sit by the fire, but then others had gotten there first and that will had evaporated. Instead, she had sat inside the tent, shoving her hands inside the fur-lined sleeves on opposite arms to keep her fingers warmer. Though she feels that she is freer of Zôrzagar than ever before, her mind is a cold, unforgiving wasteland of its own, and she finds no comfort in being alone with her thoughts. They hate you. See how they treat even those they consider their own kin. You have chosen this, the narrower path, and will have nothing to show for it.
Her chance to emerge from hiding comes toward the evening, when the Dúnedain have all wandered off to make their individual preparations and the Lossoth have retreated to the warmth of their own homes. By the long-tended fire in the center of Pynti-peldot, her fingers grow warm enough to take up charcoal in her sketchbook. She has scarcely had time to begin when a figure appears in her peripheral vision – the ranger Enniliel. Instinct tells her to get up and move away to avoid the inevitable outburst or complaint. No – I said that I would see it through. No more running away.
Fine, then. She would stay and listen, even if the woman berated her.
“I just wanted to apologize for all the…mess.”
Therdis is too taken aback to reply. She cannot possibly be serious. There must be something else. What does one say to an apology – think, Therdis. Thank you? You ought to be? It does not matter? She opens her mouth, clears her throat…
“Mess.” Fool. She will think you are mocking her. Idiot.
“The drama, with everyone yelling. This whole thing is complicated, and I’m sorry…I know you’re getting the worst of a lot of it.”
What? What madness has seized her, or what rebuke did their captain lay upon her? I cannot be self-pitying, it will defeat the whole thing. “It was not anyone’s burden but mine, and yet it has become everyone’s. Their anger is theirs to hold, and yours,” she manages, the words falling out of her mouth with all the elegance of a limp. “You are forgiven, if that is what you seek.” Does she even need forgiveness? Can one such as I give any forgiveness? Surely it is I who ought to seek such a thing. But for what? There is so much.
Another one of the Ranger-party, Gwetheril, comes and sits by the fire as well, working on some sort of fiddly sewing project. Her name means ‘past-seeker,’ but the sound of it when spoken reminds Therdis of the quacking ducks that frequented the river-banks in Tornhad, and the flapping of their wings as they took flight when scared off. The thought flits in front of the ongoing conversation, and Therdis shakes her head like a wet dog, as though that would get rid of it.
“I also wanted to make sure that you are alright. You shouldn’t have to carry burdens like…that…alone,” Enniliel continues, sitting down in an arms’ distance of Therdis. “None of us were prepared. We did not know what we were walking into, but it was not wrong for us to be summoned to help. That part was right.”
Gwetheril, usually nearly as silent as Therdis, interjects. “Yet at that time she did not wish it.” Just a fortnight earlier, Therdis would have agreed unequivocally with the statement. She had not wished it, and had been horrified to regain consciousness with not only Halfaeron, but multiple others in pursuit. In the Zôrzagar-shade’s absence, that anger had dissipated until it was nearly gone, as though it had been a different woman who had run away from Tinnudir. Had no one followed her, she would have been a bloody pile at the base of a cliff – and that fate promised a certain relief, but did not tempt her as it had so recently. Even so, what was right and what was wrong was a concept she felt no authority to speak on, unsure whether she could truly say that she knew which was which any longer.
A long silence falls between the three women. “So…er…is there any way we can help that you would appreciate?” Enniliel says finally, the implication of the question startling Therdis as much as the sudden sound. As if there is any way to help one like me. You cannot say as much. What, then, ought I to tell her? That there is nothing, no hope and no purpose to their coming here? No, that will only make her think me dismissive. What can I say to her? What would help?
“Help Halfaeron,” escapes her mouth before she can give any thought to how it will be perceived. “He is more in need of it than I. I cannot be other than what I am, but he might yet live happily, after all of this is over.” Too much. That is too much. ‘Help Halfaeron’ would have sufficed. No more self-pitying wallowing, not to them. And yet, neither of the women does as Therdis fears they will and looks at her with that mix of pity and revulsion that she has come to hate.
The conversation turns to Halfaeron’s pitiful horsemanship, and then to Enniliel’s love of the coffee-drink she carried with her, and Therdis feels as though she is being swept down a river and trying to keep her head above the water. Her last conversation of such a length had been with Aranarion (and then she had mostly ignored his attempts), and before that with Halfaeron, and before that…she cannot remember. It is exhausting, thinking of answers and questions and trying to sound the correct amounts of sincere and interested.
The women comment on the bright-green lights which dance in the sky above the ice-wastes, and Therdis finds that this, at least, she knows how to speak of – of the sky in Angmar and its sickly pallor, and how she had wondered in her time there that the same sky could be so changed.
Enniliel shudders at the mention, but not at Therdis. “I suppose evil can corrupt even the land.”
“Not just the land. And yet there are plants and creatures which grow regardless, and men who eke out a living on those scarred rocks.” We used to sit like this, all together at the end of a day. Across the fire, Therdis half-expects to see Heulyn playing the scratchy reed-pipes he carried everywhere, or Ligach, whose face was etched in a scowl except when she sang. Something catches in her throat, and she clears it as she exhales. What is done is done. They would be in more danger had they followed me. “Good men. Better than we, sometimes, for they give freely and without condemnation of the little they have.”
“I…I hope it can perhaps be cleansed of the evil part.”
Therdis could not rightly say that she loved Angmar – the land, or anything else about it – but there is some part of her which leaps to its defense. “I think the land, the earth itself, is not evil by nature. Sullied, yes, but let it lie fallow for long enough, out of evil’s long shadow, and something better might yet grow there. I saw it happen, though only in distant, secluded corners. Even stones wear smooth in the stream, given time.” What am I saying? I sound insane.
Enniliel gives her a curious look, panic rising in Therdis’ throat that she had said the wrong thing, that the rebuke was coming any moment now. “You may be right.” Gwetheril, too, has an unreadable expression, but before she can express whatever has occurred to her, she stands and goes in search of more thread, muttering something Therdis cannot quite hear.
“If the land can be healed, I may yet be.” The statement flies unbidden and unexpected from her tongue and takes Therdis by surprise. A great melancholy washes over her, mingled with a hope so tall and wide that trying to perceive it feels like drowning. I have not ever thought that before. And I had not ever thought this conversation possible, either, and yet that has changed, too.
If the land can be healed, I may yet be.
